We read:
"The LDS Church has made subtle — but significant — changes to chapter headings in its online version of the faith’s signature scripture, The Book of Mormon, toning down some earlier racial allusions.
The words “skin of blackness” were removed from the introductory italicized summary in 2 Nephi, Chapter 5, in describing the “curse” God put on disbelieving Lamanites.
Deeper into the volume, in Mormon, Chapter 5, the heading changes from calling Lamanites “a dark, filthy, and loathsome people” to “because of their unbelief, the Lamanites will be scattered, and the Spirit will cease to strive with them.”
In both cases, the text itself remains unchanged.
Chapter summaries were added in the 1920s, then rewritten by the late LDS apostle Bruce R. McConkie in 1981. That same year, a verse that used “white and delightsome” to describe what will happen to dark-skinned peoples when they repent was changed to “pure and delightsome.”
Source
15 comments:
As in Orwell's "1984" + "Animal Farm", so-called truth is malleable!
Gee, a fake religion detatching itself from reality? Now that's news.
orwell describes science as well when talking the 'truth' as it changes quite constantly
The word white is only racist because people want it to be such.
http://dictionary.weather.net/dictionary/white
Note definition 3
black or white. Involving a very clear distinction, without any gradations. For example, He tended to view everything as a black and white issue—it was either right or wrong—whereas his partner always found gray areas. This usage is based on the association of black with evil and white with virtue, which dates back at least 2,000 years. [Early 1800s]
Go back a couple years and look at how word meanings have changed, like bad, gay, liberal, etc.
Isaiah 1:18 Come, I pray you, and we reason, saith Jehovah, If your sins are as scarlet, as snow they shall be white, If they are red as crimson, as wool they shall be! (Young's Literal Translation). White was often a term for purity before it became racist to be white.
If it's just the headings, and those had only been added in recent history, then I see no controversy here, esp as the text itself remains unchanged.
In fact, this seems like prior spin being removed, rather then new spin being added, at least according to the summary provided here.
4:04 - 'Science' seeks the truth of reality and only changes its opinion as it discovers more. Religion believes it already knows the truth of all things and thus need never change its opinion.
The emphasis on racism in the headings has been removed but the racist text it is based on remains. The problem is being whitewashed but at least they are finally beginning to acknowledge that they have one.
Who cares what the mormons think or have in their books other than Mormons. I always find it interesting that the folks who criticise them the most don't really care what they change and have no intention of joining their faith if they did change so why go to all the trouble of doing it in the first place. If you think they are cooky then don't join them. I also feel the same way about Jehovas Witnesses, Scientologists, Budhists, Rastafarians, and any other group or religious sect. I really don't give a flip what they believe and am not going to waste my time criticising or demanding they change because even if they did I wouldn't join them anyway.
When politicians and others in public office have cooky religious views, it can influence the rest of society, so is no longer a private matter of what they believe.
BS. Who cares what a politician believes and who defines cook? Plenty of folks believe that anyone with any religious beliefs are cooky. Should we exclude anyone with religious beliefs from office? Then there are plenty of folks who express religious beliefs that I believe are cooky but then go completely opposite of what their faith teaches. For proof of this one need look no further than the democrates in the congress who are Catholic but support abortion and gay marriage. Even Harry Ried the democrat mormon senator from Nevada goes against his own church on their positions on both these issues. So cooky really isn't a very good standard to measure elected officials. They're all cooky anyway.
It's personal beliefs not what an institution says. It's up to the voters to decide if they think the office-holder's beliefs are too cooky or not or if it was likely to unfairly influence decisions that affect the public at large.
Cooky religious beliefs?
Mmmm, cookies!
Just remember that man invented god in order to deal with the concept of infinity.
No - it was mainly to give divine authority to the elites in society ("divine right of kings", and all that).
When Christian missionaries entered a new territory, whether in the 9th or the 19th centuries, they headed straight for the local kings and rulers - coz the subservient subjects then just worshipped whoever or whatever they were told to.
And whoever converted the Emperor Constantine or his mother - hit the mother-lode. Without that strike, christianity would have simply faded away. (The story about Constantine's vision of the cross can be no more than apocryphal.)
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